Abstract: This paper examines the validity of notions like, ethnicity, tribe, nation and state. The paper relates these to shifting or changing indentities in Africa from the pre-colonial to post-colonial period. The author shows how economic and social factors affect the construction and evolution of identities in Africa. The post-colonial elite comes under significant scrutiny in the text. Its origins and cultural moorings are seen as important in any serious consideration of the development process in Africa. The author suggests that, for democracy and development in Africa, room would need to be provided for identities which are primeval and predate the colonial experience. Such identities cannot be obliterated by decree. The answer, lies in an approach which provides cultural space for diversity, which gives democratic form and institutions to culturally diverse groups and ethnicities, but which subsumes all under a wide pan-African umbrella of institutional unity transcending the inherited colonial borders. Under such conditions 'tribalism' as localist atavism would lose its significance and impact.